I've been painting a series of master copies of Baroque portraits, and I wanted to emulate the double-toned ground seen in Van Dyck's Brussels Magistrate series of head studies, which show a warm gray thinly applied over a dry umber tone.
Purchase this Portrait Painting Course Browse my online art courses or become a member to access all the courses for an affordable monthly rate with personal instruction available.
I started with Raymar's Claessens C13DP Linen Panel and toned it with a layer of burnt umber. It works best to use a fast-drying, binding medium so I used an alkyd medium to increase the flow as I spread the paint. To get the pigment down into the grain of the linen I scrubbed the paint on with short strokes of a large filbert brush.
When the burnt umber ground was completely dry, I mixed a little raw umber and bone black oil paint into Rublev Lead Oil Ground to make a warm gray. My tone ended up a little too light and too cool, so when I do it again I'll omit the black and add more raw umber to warm and darken the tone.
I also left a little margin of the red ground showing around the edges, which makes a nice vignette effect surrounding the head studies.
The benefit of using a lead oil ground instead of lead oil paint is the ground mixture also includes chalk which gives the surface a slight "tooth" and absorbency, a surface that is less slick than if it were primed just by applying straight oil paint out of the tube.
Purchase this Portrait Painting Course Browse my online art courses or become a member to access all the courses for an affordable monthly rate with personal instruction available.